Ladislav Mrkvička

The year is 2163. Starship Ikaria XB-1 embarks on a mission deep into space in search of alien life. During their perilous journey the crew confront the effects of a malignant dark star, the destructive legacy of the 20th century and, ultimately, the limits of their own sanity.

On Klobouk Hill, which rises above the marshy forests, stands a bell tower, and there reigns Lady Fog, who rules the entire region unseen. No matter what the reformed bandit Jerka Berka claims, she is the true mistress here. And then there is the righteous Jan, who would never steal from anyone, not even the robber himself. And Jan has a lot of work to do. He must constantly rescue his brother Matouš, who has fallen in love with the robber's daughter Tereza, and he must also help the wild girl Anděla regain her true human form. Will Mrs. Mlha help him?

The film consists of five parts - a live-action framing story and four distinct animated episodes - each by a different creative team and in a different animation style, from Pojar and Koutský’s semi-plastic “Princess Who Never Smiled,” through Žabka’s puppet fable “The Fairy and the Bookkeeper,” Dlouhá and Váša’s paper-cut “Fisherman, His Wife, and the Golden Fish,” to Pixa’s near-future parable “Mr. Vincent”.

The young Marta has made a break in her medical education to fully invest in her career as a model. We follow her for a day in her life, almost completely without hearing her voice. It is seldom that Marta gets the space to speak, instead she is mostly subject to the voice of others.

The 11-year old Jakub is living in a children's home, when he is picked up by his father. The father has been "away" for four years, the boys mother doesn't want the child. Jakub gradually finds out, that his father is hiding a secret from him. But they gradually manage to build a warm relationship and a promising new life in the city.

An animal lover father brings home a cuddlesome female chimp named Tereza from his latest around the world and adopts her as a pet...

It tells about the collaboration of Mongolian-Czech geologists who are discovering treasure deposits in Mongolia, and shows the events that happen to them in a humorous tone.

In autumn 1941, Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich’s brutal rule in occupied Bohemia and Moravia fuels Czech resistance. In spring 1942, the government-in-exile sends trained paratroopers led by Lt. Král on a mission to assassinate him. Masters Strnad and Vyskočil ambush Heydrich’s open Mercedes in Prague’s Libeň district, mortally wounding him despite a jammed submachine gun. Their success triggers harsh Nazi reprisals, mass executions, and an intense manhunt for the operatives.

The third installment in a loose series featuring the character Renáta Soukupová. Renáta is on the threshold of her thirties and is determined to conquer Bohemia back, to find her permanent and certainly beautiful existence here. And, of course, love, because she left France partly due to a failed romantic relationship. However, things do not turn out as the young woman imagines.

Three separate short stories by Jan Drda from the collection The Dumb Barricade: The Dynamite Watchman, Hatred and Traces.

Pavel, a young student living in Prague in 1942, hides a Jewish girl in his apartment building's attic. Amidst the brutality of the occupying German army, love blossoms between the two. He is her only link to the outside world. Then the two are discovered by Pavel's mother, who forces the residents of the apartment building to decide whether Hana can remain.

Michal, a disillusioned teenager, clashes with his authoritarian father and runs away from home. Adrift in the city, he navigates a restless journey of fleeting encounters while rejecting the rigid values of his parents' generation.

Postwoman Mrs Skorepa, her husband the ambulance driver Mr Skorepa and their eleven-year-old twins Petr and Pavel live in Prague in Malá Strana (Lesser Town), one of the Prague's historical and oldest quarters. The boys are crazy about cars and everything linked to them. They don't share their father's love of classical music. On the other hand, they are crazy about the newly announced scrap yard competition for paper collection. The lottery tickets awarded for every ten kilograms of old paper collected could win them a go-kart.

Vlasta and Tonda don't have much longer to live but they do have one more important task ahead of them - to find and kill the communist prosecutor who sent them to prison in the 1950s. An unusual road movie about two former political prisoners who fight for justice despite every obstacle.

In one kingdom, there was a stupid king. And he suddenly became wise because he met a magical grandfather who gave him a backpack. Who would have thought that it was possible to carry wisdom in a backpack? The subjects of the king, who came to his senses in such a strange way, certainly did not know this. But not for long. And so the king had to earn his wisdom and his beloved bride...

Somewhere in the Forbidden Forest lives the evil wizard Kruciatus. A hundred years ago, he attempted to destroy the kingdom now ruled by King Alexander, who has two sons - the heir to the throne, John, and the younger prince, Charles. However, Charles refuses to accept his role as second in line at any cost. With the help of his servant Pakosta, he breaks into a forbidden chamber in the castle, obtains magical props left behind by the evil wizard, and intends to destroy his brother. Prince John drinks a magic potion served to him by his mischievous brother, which instantly erases his memory. John then recklessly sets off on a journey to the Forbidden Forest, where everyone who has ever entered has disappeared without a trace.

The accountants at a agricultural cooperative near Prague have completed the calculation of wages. The driver with the cashier are leaving for a bank in Prague to withdraw the cash amounting to over one million crowns. On returning back, an oncoming heavy truck appears, crashing into their car. The injured men cannot defend themselves, and the whole cash is stolen from them.

This downbeat, grim drama about three brothers who are reunited at their mother's funeral is actually visually as dark as its story, making it difficult at times to clearly distinguish a scene. These brothers are not particularly exceptional as people go, but at least they have branched out into separate vocations in their lives. One brother is a doctor, another is a criminal, and the third is a bus driver. Like others in Europe, they suffered through World War II, yet no matter what their backgrounds and experiences, their interpersonal relationships are not exactly gripping drama.

This film, chronicling the last days of Czech resistance fighter Maruska Kuderikova (played by Magda Vasaryova), is based on her diaries. Though she was tortured and eventually executed by the Nazis, her diaries indicate that she was optimistic for the humanity of her captors and did not by any means hate them. Told with simple dignity, this film makes clear why Maruska became a national hero.

Shoemaker Číč is a skilled craftsman, but a great mischievous and riddle-teller. Such that he tricks not only the king, but also Lucifer himself. He earns fame and wealth by doing so, but he hurts his poor neighbor Karafiátek. But still, a bad conscience begins to gnaw at him. He returns to hell and this time his own fate is at stake. Whether he lost to the devil or won over him, you will only find out from the cheerful fairy tale.

A film adaptation of the novelette of the same title written by Dominik Tatarka depicts the life of a young generation of artists that was formed in Slovakia during the war. Anabella, a young and beautiful girl meets a group of artists. She awakens their erotic desires but also pure feelings of love; she becomes the object of their secret fantasies as well as their artistic inspiration. And it seems that the boundaries between reality and fantasy suddenly cease to exist.

The Grand Hotel is a place between heaven and earth. A place where clouds and human desires float by. This metaphorical story is set in a famous hotel towering above Liberec. Working there, as both guardian and prisoner, is Fleischman, a maintenance man and amateur meteorologist who wanted to be as close to heaven as life would allow him. And you can't get any higher than that.

From time to time, we have produced an admirable film about the virtues of the domestic army, which raised the right men in ideal conditions - in this case, we meet the enthusiastic drill sergeants in green, who selflessly rehearse a demanding Spartakiad composition... So, two aspects important to the regime have merged into one. But even this did not change the incredulous, spasmodically optimistic yawn that perhaps even those who had set all this up could not believe. The film uses documentary footage of the soldiers' Spartakiada performance in 1980.

The biggest threat to a successful crackdown on drug traffickers and consumers is the international hitman Barták, sent to the Czech Republic to eliminate all his collaborators...

Autumn 1988. Renata is studying journalism. She lives with her jealous boyfriend Standa, whom she occasionally cheats on. She edits the school magazine and is perhaps a little more daring than the others, mainly because she doesn't want to be the daughter of her father, a bigwig at the Ministry of the Interior. But the situation is getting out of her hands—Renata's anti-regime mini-activities and her romance with dissident Holý are getting the attention of the STB. Her dad is worried about his career and maybe even convinced that he should disinherit her. Her relationship with Standa is getting complicated.

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After returning home from the army, Vasek (Ladislav Potmesil) has married Bozka (Eva Trejtnarová) and the couple now live at her parents' house. Vasek is unhappy both with his work and with sharing the house with Bozka's parents. He and his friend Ruda (Oldrich Vlach) decide to take a temporary job in Ostrava for a year. Bozka is against this, but Vasek gets his way. Mining is hard work but Vasek gradually adapts to it. He gets homesick from time to time and wants to go back, but his pride always wins out. Once he really does travel back to see Bozka, but he doesn't find her at home.

Even the best of friends can fall apart, often all it takes is a minor misunderstanding. That's exactly what happened to two village friends, children finishing elementary school, between whom hostility and suspicion suddenly set in. The mosaic-like plot contains a number of humorous observations, but overall it distances itself from any ambition to deeply affect the mentality of adolescents, much less the countryside.

The heroine of the story is a teenage Jitka Pažoutová, suffering from her fatness and clumsiness. For her, the real torture is especially the gym classes led by a sympathetic gym teacher, nicknamed Bohoušek by the girls. A change for the better is a dodgeball match, which the girls win thanks to Jitka's "guns", which simply cannot be caught. At the tournament, Jitka meets Honza Koubek - a boy who insults her, but then apologizes to her and persuades her to try using her strength in the shot put...

At the end of the occupation, Vojta, a young worker, marries the daughter of a rich builder to protect her from being deployed to the German Reich. Vojta agrees because he secretly loves Alena. But when the newlywed's family learns that Vojta is suspected of anti-German actions in the foundry, the marriage is over...

When former criminal Gaudl discovers the strange behaviour of his son-in-law Professor Horacek, he becomes worried about his daughter Hedwig and starts to gather evidence. When his suspicions seem justified, he visits his former colleague and friend, Lieutenant Colonel Maca. Little does Hedvika know that her husband is having an affair with their lodger Daniela. When her husband tells her of his intention to divorce her, she makes a scene at the least convenient time, while driving the car. This causes a crash in which a young hitchhiker is killed. She persuades her husband to drive away from the scene of the accident. In doing so, she takes a picture of her husband hiding the young girl's corpse in the woods. She now has a gun in her hand to blackmail the man, who decides to settle the matter once and for all.

The parents decided to send two twins, Honza, and Martin, on vacation to their grandfather.

Hockey requires great commitment and even sacrifice from an early age. The thirteen-year-old players of a school hockey team, led by an experienced and perceptive coach, struggle with various problems of their age, from first loves to low self-confidence and disciplinary problems, but in the end they are all consumed by a sense of responsibility. The film touches on the dark side of the demanding sport, but it often acts childishly and simplifies the complex motivations of teenage boys.

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A gifted poet checks into a Gothic hotel in hopes of meeting the woman with whom he has long been enamored. He is surrounded by a variety of offbeat characters like the hefty homosexual cook, shadowy clerks, snooty waiters, and valets prone to violence. He finally meets the woman of his dreams only to lose her and ultimately meet with tragedy.

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The young generation is not very at peace with the morality of their parents. In a story set in a Moravian village, the otherwise contented cooperators indulge in stealing from the common property without seeing anything wrong with such actions. After being reprimanded by their own children, they first get angry but then become ashamed. The result is a late agitational comedy that no longer deals with the peasants' entry into the agricultural cooperative, but with the mores prevailing there. The ideologically mature youth act as a guarantee of a happy future.

The photographer and his wife, a former beauty queen, make a living casting death masks. But their obsession goes so far that they decide to cast the face of a living person.

A detective story set in a youth mountaineering club. One of the members, Ivan Kočička, nicknamed Kocour, single-handedly investigates the mystery of the body of an unknown man, which he discovered in a cave on top of a rock.

The sequel to the film Icarus focuses on the further fates of pianist Kára, who decided to fight the demon of alcohol. With the support of his family, he enters an alcohol treatment center. He decided to undergo treatment voluntarily. He did not want to continue to torment his family, who care so much about him. In the treatment center, he gradually gets used to the new environment and the harsh daily routine. He also meets several patients, and perhaps the closest he gets to know is the alcoholic Fendrych. The man's struggle to gain new self-esteem and restore damaged relationships with his surroundings begins.

Radek Simek, the driver of a postal car, is shot dead on his regular route. The Investigators give up initial suspicions of robbery, because he carried no greater amount of money. Even questioning Honza Marek, another mail car driver, brings no result. When the circumstances are becoming more and more suspicious. Marek decides to track down the killer on his own.

Set in a village, the story of a simple-minded, not-so-responsible young man who still manages to take care of his younger siblings after their father has left the family. Good thing he could lean on the principles of exemplary socialist morality. Not surprisingly, the attempt to capture something of the mentality and conditions of the contemporary village breaks down into simple, poster-like lessons.

The film is set in the environment of the internationally renowned Pardubice Steeplechase, with the main roles being devoted to equestrian sport outside of filming.

Even a strict and not very popular teacher can achieve extraordinary popularity with his pupils. When their favourite teacher breaks his leg just before a bicycle trip, he is replaced by his strict colleague. Although his involuntary charges are not enthusiastic at first, they eventually become convinced that it is not good to immediately reject a person just because one does not get along with him at first...

Olda Raška, a novice pilot, is going through an emotional crisis that will greatly affect his professional abilities. Only thanks to the understanding of his superiors will he realise his shortcomings and overcome the crisis. While he begins his life's journey, the experienced pilot Lieutenant Colonel Lošťák has to quit flying for health reasons. The film is very skillfully crafted and attractive for its time, mainly due to the unique aerial shots and behind-the-scenes sequences from the airport.

A group of children from a working-class neighbourhood in Pilsen search for a way to effectively protest against the rampage of the First World War and the oppressive state power...

The story of the dramatic fate of the Czech climber Josef speck and his comrades, executed by the Nazis in April 1945 in Theresienstadt.

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When something flashes across the pond dam in the early evening, it could be the gamekeeper Čeřínek, or the poacher Kopýtko and the tailor Nitka, or... could it be Pepík and Franta? A water sprite, no, water sprites don't exist, only superstitious old women and the poor fish warden, who is a little scared of guarding the carp in the tower, believe in them. At least that's what Kopýtko and Nitka think as they plunder the pond so that their mischievous wives can show off. And what if they manage to catch a colossal fish, a carp bigger than anyone has ever seen before? Immediately, a plan emerges in their greedy minds to pass the carp off as a water sprite, display it in pubs, and make a fortune.

The family is connected with Prague's "Kolbenka", the ČKD locomotive factory. Grandfather Antonín, already retired, son Rudolf, a master in the locomotive assembly section and grandson Antonín, a promising football player. The film also tells the story of Rudolf's daughter Vera - each generation has its own ideas about life and cannot identify with the others. The film is linked by retrospective sequences from the lives of Antonín the Elder and Rudolf, especially from the war years. It is a realistic take on working-class life, unencumbered by ideology (despite the opening dedication), featuring well-known and time-tested actors in mainly male roles.

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